When I first heard about Twitter—a tool for instantly broadcasting the minutiae of your day and following the trifles of others—I couldn’t imagine a bigger waste of time.
Why would anyone care about what I had for lunch, or whether someone was headed off to the gym? Why would any business person add more noise to the signal to noise ratio?
Or—thought I—maybe Twitter is the inevitable conclusion for a culture fascinated by fame, fed by sound bites, and forced to short attention by an overwhelming amount of data.
Well, as is often the case, Twitter is not the end of civilization as we know it; it may in fact be a glimpse into the future of communication. Because, at its heart, Twitter is just a communication tool. Like the Web, and the phone and the telegram before it, it’s just a tool to let one person connect with another.
How Does Twitter Work?
Twitter users–often called Tweeple (or worse)–have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing?” If you join Twitter you can “follow” other tweeple, which causes their updates to appear on your home page. In turn, they can follow you, a form of permission-based marketing. You can also direct message them, but always in 140 characters or less.
Twitter communications can be viewed and updated on the Web, through desktop apps, and on mobile devices. Although I use all three methods, I prefer twhirl, a desktop app that has some nice added features and updates my incoming tweets in the background while I work.
A quick peek at some recent posts–called “tweets”–include what people are having for breakfast, vague unease about a job interview and a complaint that raw vegetables make one’s mouth “itchy.” (Plus a bunch of non-English tweets that may range from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again.)
How Does Twitter Help You Work?
Within this participating audience of exhibitionists are a growing number of